I had a recent run in with collation problems and it got me started reading. As I read I started to realize that for a seemingly simple subject there was a lot to it. So I thought I would go over some of what I found out.

Once you have installed your instance, created your database and tables you are now ready to start running queries. This is the point where you might have to change collations at an expression level. In order to make this change you use the COLLATE clause. This clause can be used after any string column or variable in a query. For example let’s say you have a table as such: